Tuesday, 5 October 2010

Feeling awkward

I play for the pool team at my local and during the season we have matches every Thursday evening. Last week we were playing at home and when their team arrived I was thrown.

In my post about good people the other day I mentioned the local service provider that my son has been going to and how brilliant they've been – when the other team arrived the main guy that had helped so brilliantly there was on their team.

Now he is a genuinely personable guy and we've had plenty of short friendly chats 'at work' but this was the first time in all these years that I'd bumped into anyone connected to my son's care in civvy street and it threw me. Now I should say that my friends that I play with all know my situation to some degree or another so there wouldn't have been any problem with saying this is so-and-so that helps Jr but I didn't. I don't really know why but it was a very strange feeling having two parts of my life that are normally separate collide like that. Another thing that had crossed my mind was that maybe he didn't talk too much about what he did to team mates and would it be awkward for him. We exchanged pleasantries and that but nothing more really and I think in a way I was worried about discussing anything much to do with Jr behind his back so to speak.

Even stranger was when I came to play my singles match. I couldn't concentrate properly as every time I started to line a shot he seemed to be sat in my eye-line. All very strange.

As it happened I won my singles and played in the last doubles with the score at 4-4. You can guess who was on the other pair, can't you. Funnily enough I found playing directly against him far easier – and at the back of my mind I could imagine the stick my son would give me if I had to tell him who had beaten me – and we won the game and the match. They left shortly after and as we all shook hands we kind of nodded to each other in the way you do when something has been unsaid.

After he'd gone I felt so damn silly.

The thing is though that as a carer there are different sides to your life and sometimes your sanity needs you to keep them separate. My weekly pool matches are 'my time' and somewhere I can forget about my real life. I'm not in any way a withdrawn person (for instance I'm normally the first one to go in when we play away) but this time I was rather. In a way I feel a bit ashamed about how I was as the guy has been so helpful but we're going in there today (if Jr is up to it) so I'll have a quick word with him.